bandyband

Anyone who says Obama is a "big spender" is ignorant. Compared to WHO? If you LOOK at ANY of the the total spending trends by president, Obama has increased spending at a low level not seen since Eisenhower. Don't drink so much FoxNews cool-aid.

You need to revisit your elementary math, Kobba. Teachers get paid for 180 8-hour days of work, and no matter how you schedule those 180 days, that's all they are paid for. Spreading the pay over 12 months is simple math: 9 months pay divided by 12= actual teacher pay (minus federal and state income taxes, retirement and health insurance premiums)

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The bandwagon needs to be examined... don't blindly support OR degrade an issue based on your political alliance or whether you watch MSNBC or FOX News. Look at the FACTS. States that have had charter schools for years have not been able to show OVERALL improvement in test scores, graduations rates, or even attendance.

Yes, there are successful INDIVIDUAL charter schools, but their have also been MANY unsuccessful charter schools. The only real advantage within these schools is a suspension of federal and state policies that restrict teaching styles and content delivery. In other words, teachers are allowed to TEACH, rather than only preparing students for a high-stakes test.

The problem with FAILING charter schools is that the relaxation of the rules can, because they are run as businesses, cut corners which fail children: unqualified and undertrained teachers, kicking out struggling kids, lack of services for slower learners, etc. Many also lack the extracurricular activities that encourage students to attend school, such as sports, band, and clubs.

So, why don’t we reform the public education system to allow the teachers more freedoms to TEACH (as the charter schools would)??? It’s a Magic-Bullet fix that people are buying into: charter schools fix all. FACT: it’s not. Like almost everything else in life, it’s not as easy and cut-and-dry as we would love it to be.

The answer is simple: fast track this issue to the US Supreme Court, and let them rule once and for all.

Until there is a straight-forward path to earn citizenship, there will continue to be problems. Immigrants founded this country, and Native Americans migrated here as well- we all came here from somewhere else. We need to provide a legal pathway to citizenship THAT MAKES SENSE, rather than the backwards system we have now.

Tea, you seem to forget all the debt that Bush and the GOP set forth- both parties have been guilty of sending us deep in the tanker. Reagan would definately be cast as liberal now: he had to raise taxes (a lot) to save a sinking ship. He also exploded military spending, building bases that would close only a feew years later (like Mobile). The thing is: he bit the bullet and for the GOOD OF THE COUNTRY brought the taxes back up to meet the requirements of the country.

Yes, we need additional cuts in spending, but we also will have to raise some taxes and pay the bills we haven't been paying. Many independent ecomists have agreed that cutting spending will not get us out of the hole.

Did you forget that the state has been in proration, reducing budgets accross the board for 10 years now??? I wish it has only been three years. And don't even think for a second that TEACHERS got a raise during that time either--- all the ones that were planned did not happen, yet teachers were also sacked with over 2,500 positions lost, tripling insurance co-pay, 3% pay cut, no classroom funds for materials, no new textbooks, and dealing with even more mandated student AND teacher testing every year.

You guys who spout about how teachers have it easy: TRY BEING A TEACHER. You wouldn't last a week. I've heard all the idiot mess on here about how you guys would "FIX THOSE KIDS"- well I have a heads-up for you: TEACHERS HAVE TO FOLLOW THE RULES (THE LAW)- and there are more and more laws about how you can handle kids with discipline issues, how you have to teach, what styles and accommodations you have to make-WE NO LONGER HAVE CHOICES LIKE YOU DREAM OF when you sound off on these issues.

"Into the twenty-first century, 90 percent of all K-12 public school teachers and 70 percent of support personnel are members of AEA. Community college instructors in the state, who represent about 70 percent of community college faculty, are another large membership block within AEA. The overall membership numbers are especially impressive as AEA members cannot be members of AEA alone, but also must join the National Education Association (NEA) to be a member in good standing of AEA. Thus, AEA is probably one of the leading state education associations in the nation in terms of representing teachers without union representation, which is the case for many states outside the South."
Reference: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2528